


on the path unwinding

by lucida



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin, California Diaries - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 21:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3503171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucida/pseuds/lucida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best part about Yale is that it’s three thousand miles away from Palo City. Three thousand miles away from her father’s impossible standards and, even better, from her mother—who comes home every evening and dives straight into a tall, clear bottle, drowning her isolation in vodka and gin.</p><p>The worst part is that she’s three thousand miles from Zeke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on the path unwinding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imamaryanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imamaryanne/gifts).



> For imamaryanne, who wanted fic where Maggie and Zeke bond over how screwed up their family is. Hope you like it. ♥

It takes Maggie longer than usual to unlock the door to her suite, struggling under several bags of laundry, and when she finally gets in she almost trips over a pair of tall black boots.

“Someone tried calling you.” Maggie’s roommate Meredith doesn’t look away from her laptop, where she’s typing importantly on the keyboard. “Your boyfriend? I don’t know. He left a message.”

Maggie rolls her eyes and leans forward to press play on the answering machine.

“For the last time, Rico isn’t my boyfriend. Just because he leaves a message singing me happy birthday doesn’t mean--”

_“You have three unheard messages. First unheard message…”_

Maggie cuts off as the answering machine begins, sits cross-legged on her bed and flips through her planner. She doesn’t know why she let her father talk her into taking economics. She doesn’t even need it for her major, and the paper on game theory is going to take up her entire weekend.

_“Hey Maggie. It’s me.”_ Pause. _“Um. Call me later? Miss you.”_

Zeke. Frowning, Maggie sets the planner down. Zeke sounds upset. It’s eleven at night, which means it’s only eight in Palo City, so he might still be home.

_“Second unheard message: Me again. Thought you might want to know that Pilar quit. For good this time, I think. Mom was pretty nasty to her. But just—call me back, okay?”_

“You okay?” Meredith actually turns around, frowns at Maggie. “You’re pale as a ghost.”

Maggie ignores her because the third message is playing.

_“Hey. I keep trying to call your cell but I guess you either left it in your room or it went dead. Dad’s catching the next flight back. We’re all fine, or we’re going to be fine, but I don’t want to tell you this over an answering machine. Call me. I’ll keep my cell on.”_

Maggie’s chest is tight and her throat is dry and she feels like she’s on autopilot as she snaps her cellphone off the nightstand and speed dials Zeke. His voice is low and croaky when he answers.

“I’m coming home,” she promises, before he even tells her what’s wrong. If their dad is flying in from the movie shoot in Australia, then it’s bad. She’s already looking up flights on her laptop, sees a 6am departing from JFK that still has some seats available available. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“No,” Zeke protests. “You have Yale. I can handle it. I just wanted you to know.”

“My flight leaves at six tomorrow morning.” Maggie reaches for her purse and shakes the contents out on her bed; a tube of lipstick rolls off the mattress and onto the floor. She hits ‘confirm’ on her flight and pulls her credit card from her wallet. “I'll be there by noon.”

For a moment there’s silence and Maggie thinks Zeke might protest. 

“Okay,” he says softly. “Love you.”

\---

The best part about Yale is that it’s three thousand miles away from Palo City. Three thousand miles away from her father’s impossible standards and, even better, from her mother—who comes home every evening and dives straight into a tall, clear bottle, drowning her isolation in vodka and gin.

The worst part is that she’s three thousand miles from Zeke.

\--- 

Maggie is expecting to see Zeke waiting for her at baggage claim. Instead her eyes immediately land on Ducky, who’s admittedly pretty hard to miss when he’s wearing a yellow and green bowler shirt with “DUCKY” in small font across the top right.

“Maggie!” he calls her over, as if she could miss him, and next thing she knows he’s wrapping her up in a tight hug. “How was the flight? Oh, and—“ He holds up bag of Thai takeout, gives her a warm smile. “Picked this up on my way over. Thought you might be hungry.”

Maggie appreciates Ducky not asking any questions. She can still remember the time she called him around midnight, when Eileen was loaded and destroying the house, and he picked her and Zeke up no questions asked. Just took them to his place, let them sleep in the master bedroom, then whipped them up pancakes in the morning.

“You’re amazing.” She returns Ducky’s smile, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “For that, I’m not even going to mention your shirt.”

Ducky pretends to be offended. “Oh come on Maggie, don’t be jealous.” Then, shrugging, “it was a gift from Sunny.”

The smell of the Thai food accompanies them all the way to the parking lot. Maggie's starving, and even though her stomach is uncomfortably knotted, she opens a container of pan fried noodles as soon as they're in the car. It had been too early for breakfast, and the nuts and crackers on the plane hadn't been filling. 

As Ducky backs out of the parking space, Maggie fiddles with the radio. Something about the upbeat music on most of the channels clashes with her nerves, and she winds up turning the radio off completely.

“Why are you here?” She asks, glancing over at Ducky. “I mean, I’m assuming Zeke told you.”

“Yeah.” Ducky doesn’t take his eyes off the road. “He called me when he was trying to get in touch with you. Wanted to know if I’d heard from you. He called Amalia too. I told him to let me know if he needed anything, then he called back and said you were flying in and needed a ride, so. Here I am.”

Silence.

Maggie turns her phone back on and checks for missed calls. (There aren’t any.) Ducky sighs, and then adds—

“We can talk about it. If you want. I’m fine with not talking about it, too. But if you want to talk about it---I’ve been there. And I can handle it.”

“I know you can.” Maggie bites her lip and looks down at her lap. “But not talking about it is good for now. You should tell me more about that hideous shirt you’re wearing.”

“Hey!” Ducky shouts indignantly, glancing in Maggie’s direction to fix her with a look. “You promised not to bring up the shirt.”

“I lied.” Maggie makes herself stick her tongue out at Ducky teasingly and then leans against the seat, closes her eyes, thinks about how this almost feels normal. It almost feels like Ducky is just picking her up on a break from Yale, and not because her mother decided to slit her wrists.

\---

A half hour drive turns into two hours due to Los Angeles traffic. They’re sitting in a long line of cars blasting the Lion King soundtrack because of course Ducky has the Lion King soundtrack, when “The Circle of Life” comes on and Maggie’s mood plummets.

“I never should have left California,” she groans.

Ducky stops singing abruptly and glances over at Maggie, fingers hovering over the dial as if he isn’t sure if he should turn the volume down or not.

“I’m not saying I could have stopped this.” She holds up a hand, predicting Ducky’s argument. “I’m not stupid. But I shouldn’t have left Zeke to deal with this alone when I knew something like this was possible. It was always in the back of my head. What if Mom—you know. But I just wanted to escape.”

Maggie is glad Ducky doesn’t respond with something about how it’s not her fault, how she couldn’t have predicted this, how Zeke is strong.

Ducky reaches over and squeezes her arm lightly, one hand on the steering wheel as they inch forward at a snail’s pace.

“It’s going to be okay,” he promises. “I know that sounds cheap right now, but it’s true. You’re going to be okay, and Zeke’s going to be okay, because you’re both fucking badasses.”

Maggie blinks away a few tears, wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand when she thinks Ducky isn’t looking.

“So are you.” She tells Ducky, voice cracking. “The most badass.”

\---

Zeke’s room feels huge after living in a dorm room for months. Not only does he have a queen sized bed instead of the tiny single Maggie has, but there’s also a sofa, a full entertainment center with a 48” TV, a stereo system, a VHS/DVD player, and no less than four gaming systems.

“If there’s one thing I miss about living in this house, it’s having a bedroom that isn’t the size of a shoebox,” Maggie says in greeting. Immediately dropping the controller, Zeke jumps up from the sofa and flings himself at Maggie.

“I am so glad you’re here,” he speaks in a rush, still holding on tightly to her. “I didn’t know what to do. Dad was gone and I was lucky to even get him to answer my phone calls and—“

“I’m sorry I left,” Maggie interrupts. She drops her laptop bag on the ground and collapses on the couch. “I should have gone somewhere closer. Stanford. Or maybe even UCLA.” She pauses. “Dad would have loved that.”

Zeke walks over to the entertainment center and opens a drawer, pulls out a second controller.

“No.” He shakes his head firmly. “You got into fucking Yale. Do you really think I’d expect you to give that up and stay here?”

Maggie tucks her feet under, curling up on the couch.

“It still makes me feel guilty,” she admits. “Leaving you here to deal with all this shit.”

“It’s not our job.” Zeke plugs in the other controller and tosses it to Maggie. It lands on her lap and she starts to protest but he stops her. “It’s Dad’s job. Even though he doesn’t seem to care. Do you know how long it took me to convince him to fly here? I told him what had happened and he started going on about his movie. I swear the last person who touched his soul got frostbite.”

Zeke falls onto the couch next to Maggie and picks up his own controller.

“Mario Kart,” he explains to Maggie. “Trust me, it works. And you’ll be surprised how violent turtles, babies, and princesses can be.”

Zeke sets up the game and describes the characters traits to Maggie. He’s talking so fast that it mostly goes over Maggie’s head, but she gets that Wario is cool because he gets bombs, and can blow people up. The princesses suck but they’re at least better than Donkey Kong, whose specialty weapon is giant bananas.

“If you’re Donkey Kong, you don’t even get any immunity from the bananas.” Zeke scoffs. “So half the time you run into your own bananas and screw yourself over.”

“Okay, so Donkey Kong is out,” Maggie agrees. “What about Baby Mario and the red turtle with the wings?”

“Solid choice.” Zeke selects Wario and a lanky purple character Maggie doesn’t recognize. “Alright, here we go. Time to own those computer generated morons.”

Maggie usually isn’t one for video games, but there’s something soothing about playing. Mostly it’s amusing to see how into it Zeke gets, bombing his opponents and shouting “YES!” as he zips his way into first place.

\---

The Mario Kart tournament lasts until about midnight, Zeke finishing in first every time and Maggie reaching a personal high when she gets fifth overall on Flower Cup. It’s so easy to be with Zeke, talking about anything and everything except why Maggie is here.

“I hate my history class,” Zeke complains as they sit around the table, a box of pizza between them. “The only way I’m surviving is my imagining Paul Revere as a time traveler who is fated to spend eternity riding around on horseback, handing out warnings.”

Maggie snorts on her water.

“I’m just imagining Paul Revere showing up on the Titanic now,” she says. “The iceberg is coming, the iceberg is coming!”

“And then the tea people arrive and are like… throw tea!”

“Throw tea?” Maggie raises an eyebrow at Zeke, going for a stern professor look, but ends up doubling over laughing. “Tea people?”

“Shut up!” Zeke is also laughing. “I’m tired okay. Long day. It’s the best I have right now.”

“You’re right.” Maggie says. “It has been a long day. We should probably head to bed.”

Zeke nods, carries the pizza box to the refrigerator, and Maggie notices how exhausted he looks. They’ve been spending all day doing everything but talking about their mother, but it’s obviously been weighing on both of them. Still, it was nice to pretend this is just a normal visit for awhile.

“Mom can only have visitors for an hour each day,” Zeke speaks up, face half-hidden by the refrigerator door. “So we can pick up Dad at the airport tomorrow and then go see her if you want.”

Maggie crosses the room to Zeke and wraps her arms around him.

“That sounds good,” she say softly, realizing she’s started to cry. She squeezes Zeke tighter, and he squeezes back, and they’re both shaking. “It will be okay,” she promises him, repeating Ducky’s words. “You and I will be okay.”


End file.
